Inaugurated in January 2005, the Louise Michel library of the BU Inspé centralizes most of the collections of the former Écoles Normales for girls and boys at the Avignon and Aix-en-Provence sites. Between 1837, when the École Normale des garçons was founded (1844 for the girls), and the creation of the IUFM in 1992, the documentary collections underwent many vicissitudes, following the rhythm of the École Normale's reforms and restructuring: relegation, splintering, encyclopedism, then refocusing on professional aspects.
It is a multi-disciplinary collection of around 20,000 volumes, mainly monographs, with few periodical collections.
The collection includes a pedagogical section, the oldest of which dates back to 1819 and the most recent to 2006. A recent census (2014) counted this collection at 4,001 documents. Most of these works are listed in the Sudoc, and the vast majority were published during the 20th century between 1950 and 1980, a period that corresponds to the Trente Glorieuses and is marked by the vitality of educational publishing. Conversely, works published in the 19th century account for less than 9% of the total, with a high proportion dating from the 1880s and 1890s, corresponding to the years when the republican school system of the Third Republic took root and the Ferry Law was implemented. It also includes works on the history of the school system and education, as well as official instructions.
In terms of pedagogy and didactics, all the great authors of the 19th century are represented: Octave Gréard, Ernest Lavisse, Fernand Buisson, Félix Pécaut, Jules Gabriel Compayré, Jules Michelet... The collection also includes primary school textbooks: grammars, illustrated moral, history and geography books, reading methods, lessons and a few works of children's literature.
There is also a collection of documents testifying to the very specific training given to schoolteachers in a wide range of fields, from moral philosophy to agronomy, and even certain crafts. This training had to be as humanistic as possible, and the teacher, depending on the position he or she held, was the sole source of knowledge.
The presence of a boarding school until the 1970s also explains the presence of a significant general culture collection, consisting mainly of works of classical and 20th-century literature.
In addition to this educational collection, a textbook conservation collection was set up in the 2000s, with the aim of enhancing the value of works at the heart of teaching practices and reflecting the evolution of curricula, a collection often sought by researchers in the history of education.
